PAUL PRESCOTT’S CHARGE.

To
The Boys
Whose Memory Goes Back
With Me
To The Boarding School
At Potowome
This Volume Is Affectionately
Dedicated
By
The Author.

PREFACE

“PaulPrescott’scharge”
is presented to the public as the second volume of
the Campaign Series. Though wholly unlike the
first volume, it is written in furtherance of the
same main idea, that every boy’s life is a campaign,
more or less difficult, in which success depends upon
integrity and a steadfast adherence to duty.

How Paul Prescott gained strength by battling with
adverse circumstances, and, under all discouragements,
kept steadily before him the charge which he received
from his dying father, is fully told; and the author
will be glad if the record shall prove an incentive
and an encouragement to those boys who may have a
similar campaign before them.

PAUL PRESCOTT’S CHARGE.

I.

SquireNewcome.

“Hannah!”

The speaker was a tall, pompous-looking man, whose
age appeared to verge close upon fifty. He was
sitting bolt upright in a high-backed chair, and looked
as if it would be quite impossible to deviate from
his position of unbending rigidity.

Squire Benjamin Newcome, as he was called, in the
right of his position as Justice of the Peace, Chairman
of the Selectmen, and wealthiest resident of Wrenville,
was a man of rule and measure. He was measured
in his walk, measured in his utterance, and measured
in all his transactions. He might be called a
dignified machine. He had a very exalted conception
of his own position, and the respect which he felt
to be his due, not only from his own household, but
from all who approached him. If the President
of the United States had called upon him, Squire Newcome
would very probably have felt that he himself was the
party who conferred distinction, and not received
it.

Squire Newcome was a widower. His wife, who was
as different from himself as could well be conceived,
did not live long after marriage. She was chilled
to death, as it was thought, by the dignified iceberg
of whose establishment she had become a part.
She had left, however, a child, who had now grown
to be a boy of twelve. This boy was a thorn in
the side of his father, who had endeavored in vain
to mould him according to his idea of propriety.
But Ben was gifted with a spirit of fun, sometimes
running into mischief, which was constantly bursting
out in new directions, in spite of his father’s
numerous and rather prosy lectures.